AN: I am not the original author of the story below my goal is to gather any stories from around the web and have them in one area so that they don't get deleted. If you are the original author and would like me to remove this story I will.

Martha You Dope Part 10

"Sit down here on the floor," John pulled on Ringo's pant's leg.

Ringo sat. "We need to open some windows," he gasped.

George shuddered. "You're barmy! Remember what's out there?"

Paul groaned and stirred. John reached out a hand and felt his eyelids quiver. Paul turned his head away and opened his eyes. To blackness. The other three heard his rather alarmed gasp.

"It's ok, Paul," Ringo said. "We don't have any more candles."

Paul started coughing like the rest of them. "What happened? Is everyone all right?"

There was a short silence as Ringo, George and John tried to figure out what to tell him.

John finally started. "George was grabbed by something outside. Couldn't see anything of it but a bloody great paw. We patched him up and then found the living room ablaze."

"I was trying to get to you when I tripped on something and fell. Must've knocked the candles over," Paul said.

"You're fucking lucky you aren't burned to ashes right now," George muttered. His own ankle was throbbing.

Paul was silent. He was feeling anything but lucky at that moment. Slowly he raised himself into a sitting position and groped around. His hand brushed against John's arm and he found it trembling.

"John?" he questioned quietly.

"This is just too fucking crazy," John said shakily. "Can you believe what's happening? Here we sit, back in the dark. Can't get out because some thing out there tried to fucking tear George's foot off. Can't stay because you need to get to a bloody doctor. George too, now."

"I'm not so bad, John," Paul said. "The splint helps a lot."

"Then why are you fucking passing out every ten minutes?" John snapped.

John felt scared and cornered. And when he got scared and cornered, his language became even more peppered with foul language. Paul sighed. He was, quite suddenly, completely exhausted. The best thing in the world would be to just curl up in a ball and go to sleep, to escape this nightmare. He closed his eyes.

George felt as if his leg were burning. Hot pain ran up and down from his ankle. But he was shivering with cold. He didn't say anything to the others. Why alarm them more? "Does anyone know what time it is?" he asked instead.

"We got here about midnight, I think. Maybe about three hours or so have passed?" Ringo guessed.

"So it's around three in the morning," John said glumly. "No hope of the sun coming up any time soon." As if to mock him, a flash of lightning briefly illuminated all their tired, smudged faces and was followed by a clap of thunder. The rain, which had lightened, returned with a pounding vengence.

"Paul, can you think of where you might have any more candles, torches or even oil lamps?" John asked. Light would at least raise their spirits a bit.

Paul didn't answer. Another flash of lightning revealed him slumped against the bottom step, eyes closed.

"He's asleep," Ringo said.

"How can that git sleep?" George asked in reproachful wonder.

"He's had a time of it, hasn't he?' John replied.

They all fell silent, eventually dropping into fitful sleep themselves, huddled together on the hard floor. Martha crept back downstairs and laid across Paul's lap with a sigh. Occassionally she lifted her head and growled at the front door, but no one was awake to hear her.

Paul awoke with a jerk. Martha was barking and growling fiercely somewhere in the darkness."Martha?" His voice came out in a whisper. He cleared his throat from the smoke and tried again. "Martha? Come here, girl!" He heard her nails tapping across the floor.

The rest of them had woken to Martha's furious barking too. John groaned at the stiffness in his muscles.

"George?" Ringo asked in the blackness. "You still doing ok?"

"Peachy!" George snapped. Ringo was a bit taken aback. George usually handled things with more dignity than that.

Outside, the rain had let up again. In the resulting quiet came the sound of something big crunching through the dead leaves and branches strewn around the grass. It seemed to stop underneath the large living room window.

"Oh no," Ringo half moaned to himself.

Before they had time to do anything else, the window shattered. The impact was so great that they felt the sharp spray of glass shards from where they sat. Scrambling up, John yelled, "Fucking hell! Upstairs!"

He pulled on Paul as they heard a horrible howl and the sound of splintering wood. A rancid smell overpowered the smoke. A smell like raw meat gone bad. Ringo grabbed George and they all stumbled up the stairs in the darkness.

"Hurry, hurry!" John was nearly frantic. It was as if he could feel the beast's hot breath on his back.

Paul was to the point where it really didn't matter to him anymore. Every time John dragged him up another stair, his leg smashed into the next riser. The pain was incredible. This time around, it did beat out the fear.

John felt him sag in his grip. "No. No you don't!" he said wildly. Yanking Paul up, he slapped him hard across the face. "Don't you dare!" he yelled, shaking him. "You fucker, I'll leave you here, I swear I will!"

"No you won't," Paul muttered. Raising his own hand, he delivered a resounding slap to John's face, which stopped his hysteria cold.

Without another word, they reached the top of the stairs. "My room, my room!" Paul shouted above the din of crashing wood and growling. The four of them fell into the room and Ringo slammed the door. Then they heard the high-pitched, panicked barking of a terrified dog.

"Martha!" Paul shouted. He lunged out of John's grasp and fell against the door, pulling it open.

"No, Paul!" Ringo grabbed him and tried to stop him from leaving the sanctuary of the room.

Paul shook him off and stumbled out the door, calling to Martha. She came running up the stairs and knocked him over as she fled into the bedroom. Something pounded up the stairs after Martha. It stopped and loomed over Paul; something breathing in harsh gasps, emitting waves of rank, rotten breath that nearly gagged him. In stupified amazement, he gazed up as the merciless lightning flashed full on a furred face with beady eyes, a pointed snout filled with rows of curved, yellowed teeth. The thing from hell bent over him, slavering. Strings of ropey saliva dripped onto Paul's upturned face.

Suddenly he was yanked away by rough hands under his armpits. John propelled him into the bedroom as the creature roared and gave chase. John left him lying on the floor as Ringo slammed and locked the door. John and George, heaving and straining, shoved Paul's wardrobe in front of it. There was a tremendous crash as the creature smashed against the door. Then they heard its low-pitched growling as it began to pace in front of the bedroom.

Paul lay face-up on the floor, stunned. He didn't even bother to wipe the stinking drool from his face. He lay there and stared blankly at the ceiling. Ringo felt his way to the nightstand beside the bed and reached inside. Ignoring the shape of condom packets and other expected items, he searched for one particular shape, praying he'd find it. At the very back of the drawer, his hand closed around the slim form of a small flashlight. He pulled it out and tried the switch. A thin beam of light burst out and shone on the opposite wall.

"Light," John breathed reverently.

Ringo shone it next to Paul. "Are you ok?"

Paul didn't answer. He found the ceiling fascinating, really quite beautiful. Funny how he never noticed that before. He smiled.

George didn't like that smile. It was wrong. Paul should be gibbering in fear, something. He nudged him with his good foot. "What'd you see?" he asked brusquely. "What'd it look like?"

Paul continued to stare at the ceiling with a dreamy expression, his mind forming a protective barrier against the thing he'd just witnessed.

In the hall, the creature stopped moving back and forth. In fact, they could no longer hear anything from it. George turned impatiently to John, who was trying to light a cigarette with badly shaking hands. "Did you see it?"

John shrugged. "I was concentrating on grabbing Paul and getting the hell out of there before I lost my head. All I saw was something big and hairy."

Ringo grimaced. "How hairy?"

"It was wearing a wristwatch," Paul said pleasantly from the floor. They all started and looked down at him. He turned his cheerful face to George. But the facade started to crumble rapidly as the images flooded back.

The smile faltered and his voice cracked. "It had on a man's gold wristwatch," he repeated. "Oh God." He closed his eyes and tears squeezed out. "You can't imagine..."

Ringo knelt next him. "Come on, Paul. We're all here. Sit up, there's a good lad. You'll feel better." He patted him on the shoulder.

John shuddered. He didn't know how they were going to get out of this.